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Some of this was covered in the The Simplification of the Series, when do you give up? thread, but I wanted an opportunity to rant specifically about how lazy it was of Bethesda to leave so many Skyrim NPCs essential after all their associated quests have been completed.

There are dozens of roles and "offices" that would look odd if they remained unfilled after their previous holder died, but which of these are truly, um, essential to the game? The vendors in the various cities have interchangeable dialogue voiced by different actors, so they could have a "deep bench" of NPCs for these roles. I suppose one could argue that the Jarls are never "done" with their quests and so should remain essential (along with their Civil War understudies), but who else?

Alternatively, which NPCs are completely disposable once their quests are done? I give a couple of examples in the spoiler box below:

Spoilers for the Thieves Guild questline and The Whispering Door

Personally I dislike it when any NPC's are entirely essential. I liked the "protected" state that came into being in Skyrim - NPC's couldn't kill each other, but the player could kill them - but it didn't go far enough. One of my favourite things about Fallout: New Vegas was the way that I could literally kill all named NPC's of a faction I didn't like. Would I be locked out of certain quests? Yes. That's the choice I made, and I think BSG really needs to get the idea of player agency through it's head. You can't just give us freedom to build our character anyway we want and then force us into a strict, linear quest line that is definitely not one size fits all.

^
Indeed. Many things in the game only have illusion of choice since there's really no consequences and you really cannot fail quests. I never liked this kind of hand-holding. If I want to kill a NPC and thus terminate my progress in a quest, then so be it. I'm willing to take responsibility for my actions. That's a real choice/freedom there.

I must say the Civil War and Dark Brotherhood were refreshing in this department since I can actually choose a side and thus fail doing the other.

Does "protected" status keep an NPC from being killed by random dragons amd vampires? If so, that seems an ideal solution. It should still go away once all the NPC's quests are done.

It does. They fall to one knee like normal, but if the player lands another blow they die. I believe most companions are treated this way.

I was thoroughly disappointed with essential and protected NPCs. Especially when they're a follower.
You should have to play with consequences in mind and take into account what situations are too much to handle. Seeing a follower actually die, instead of just falling to a knee for a short time would really make you value your allies, hirelings, friends, and charges as a life with the potential for lasting loss rather than a weight chained to your feet.

There are reasons for the mechanic, you know. The AI is too erratic and dynamic (in the name of realism) for everyone to be totally vulnerable. Quests would often be impossible to complete through no fault of the player's choices. There was no such mechanic in Morrowind, but then, in Morrowind, most NPCs just stood around in the same place; it was far more predictable.

That said, there are also reasons for the Creation Kit, and your preferences are among them. The kind of play you want is available to you. It just isn't the default, and that's the case for some pretty solid design reasons.

This. Beth release the tools to customise bits like this - the only reason Xbox and PS3 didn't have the CK is Microsoft/Sony wouldn't allow it...

Saying "Well you can edit the game so there's not really anything wrong." is a cop-out, IMO. I love Bethesda, I've played Bethesda games all my life and TES are among my favourite, but it's a cop-out. After all, if it was a design choice to protect quest essential npcs, why are they left essential after their quests? The answer is they were too lazy to script them unessential afterwards.

I didn't say that they implemented it perfectly or that anyone should like that it is the way it is. I said there are reasons the mechanic exists, good ones, and I stand by that.

@Marelo
I understand the mechanic and the reason it was implemented. I also understand that Bethesda didn't want to bar players from content by way of letting a dragon or what have you dynamically appear and dynamically kill an NPC.
However, it is my opinion that, while well intentioned, it took just a little bit of immersion and realism away, when immersion and realism(with regard to the fact that this is a fantasy setting) is one of the things that really drew me, and probably others, into TES. I think one of Beth's strongest suits as an RPG maker is that they are so great at creating a world and not holding one's hand. It is one of the many things that has made them stand out from the rest, if not unique.
True, one can fix this with the CK(which is indeed glorious and useful), but having to do so just feels as though we(and only the PC users, as the others don't get to play with the CK) have finish tying up loose ends that Beth left dangling. It's almost like we're still in test mode with training wheels on.

I think you're making the mistake of calling something unfinished just because you don't like the direction it was taken in. If you don't like the direction it was taken in, sure, that's fine, that's something you're entitled to, but going on to say that Bethesda expects you to "finish tying up loose ends that [they] left dangling" is mightily unfair and accusatory. They don't expect you to finish their game. They wanted it the way it is for reasons. They made that decision knowing that there would be people who wouldn't like it, because they felt it was best for the game they were trying to make.

And then, as always, they handed over the very tools they used to make the game, so that if people wanted to change that experience for themselves, they could. (And, please, don't bring in the console distinction. You know as well as I do that if Bethesda could convince the console companies to allow mods, they would in a heartbeat. It's a technical and bureaucratic issue that's out of their hands.)

There's this sentiment I keep seeing behind (and sometimes in front) of the posts in this thread, that Bethesda is lazy. If that's how any of you actually feel, I'm sorry to be so harsh, but that's absolutely ridiculous. The amount of work that went into making these games is staggering. They are dedicated people, who love what they're working on. They just aren't perfect, and they just can't make it perfect for every single player.

(Before anyone jumps on this point: I am obviously not talking about the leftover essential NPCs at the end of quests; that's clearly an oversight, a bug. Bugs happen.)

I am truly sorry for making it seem as though I was calling Bethesda "lazy" (seriously, I'm sorry; zero sarcasm). You are 1000% correct in that they are an extremely talented, zealous group of fans that love what they do and do what they love( and do it well). I am not trying to attack or badmouth Bethesda. They will always be a developer whose work and artistry I will appreciate and support. Additionally, even though I spend more time in the Morrowind forum, I've actually logged almost as much time on Skyrim since it's release as I have for Morrowind since I bought it in 2003. I love Skyrim, and have since the start.

I will leave the console direction/topic out of this and stay away from it. Again, you are right on that point of bureaucracy and evil corporations' machinations getting in the way of Bethesda's wishes and desires.

Regarding the topic and our previous posts, I will say this. There is other content in the game, namely the Civil War, that while being finished, was left a little bare. Would you agree that there was indeed content that Bethesda wanted to release with the game that was cut? Would it seem unreasonable that, due to time/personnel constraints and/or pressure to get the game released that certain content/internal game preference settings would be overlooked?

Finally, with that mechanic in place, and with the knowledge that some of the either older or more "hardcore" fans would enjoy not having it, would it have been so hard to include, in the game as it is (without using the CK) to turn said mechanic off? Obviously, there are a few NPCs and instances that make the "essential/protected" setting reasonable, such as Hadvar, Ralof, Ulfric, and Tullius at the beginning.

Again, I am sorry, and apologize to anyone who I may have or did offend/agitate/upset with something I said. That was not my intention in any way, shape, or form. To show I mean it... S FOR EVERYBODY!

1. The Civil War is massively cut down from what it was meant to be. As in, gutted of content with a mere shell left behind. There is loads of things that they wanted to put in and ran out of time to do - look at this page for a start: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Unused_NPCs

2. No idea, I don't do coding...

1. Yeah, it's totally fair to say that. Bethesda would probably even admit it if anyone bothered to ask them (and if they didn't have marketing concerns to worry about). Content gets cut from games due to financial and time constraints all the time, across the industry, and Skyrim is no exception.

2. Not knowing the structure of their code, and having only basic scripting knowledge, I can't say for sure. I suspect with the game as shipped, yeah, it would have been pretty hard. I believe it took the modding community quite a while to figure out how to do it dynamically (as in, not manually, not hardcoded, which is what such an option would require). It may even have needed SKSE, though I'm not sure on that point. If you're not familiar, SKSE is an extended Papyrus base and alternate .exe for Skyrim.

Yeah, I really liked the protected state. I really wish Skyrim didn't hold your hand all the time with the essential status. One reason I really liked Morrowind was because, for the most part, it didn't coddle you - you could pretty much go and kill whomever you wanted. Was this a bad idea? More than likely, yes. Was it likely to make it so you weren't able to continue in a questline? Hell yeah. However, unless you reloaded, it made it so you pretty much had to "live" with your mistakes of going around murdering people. You didn't get a "kill everyone /but some of these people you can't for future quests" pass. If you messed up and killed an important NPC, well, you made your own bed so now you have to lay in it.

If anything, like what was previously mentioned, I atleast wish they changed it so after a certain questline was done, essential status was taken off. Even though Oblivion had a decent number of NPCs, I want to say that there wasn't many that were... well, always essential?
Alessia Caro comes to mind. She's initially essential, until a certain quest in the Thieves Guild and another, unrelated Daedric quest are completed. After that, she's unessential, and I'd be lying if I said my dunmeri assassin wasn't glad to have ride Tamriel of that racist cow.

I would have been really happy to be able to been able to ... ahem, "dispatch" some NPCs like Delphine in Skyrim. It would have been nice if Maven was unessential; I understand why she isn't because of multiple questlines, and because she might replace the Jarl of Riften, but it would have been nice to take her on - particularly if you sided with the Stormcloaks and destroyed the Dark Brotherhood. (OK, for story progression, maybe if they also had a "destroy the thieves guild" questline, with Mjoll... That would have been pretty cool, actually. And if you didn't complete, or begin the Thieves Guild questline, you would just fail it). It'd also be nice to kill whatever Jarl, but I guess that's just because I really dislike Maven and the Silver-Bloods, ahaha.

I do find it a bit... strange that Fallout: New Vegas had it so you could pretty much kill any NPC (with a few exceptions, that being like... Children and stuff), and yet Skyrim came out later on and had so many essential NPCs. I know NV was technically developed by someone else apparently (and just published under Beth's name), but still.

I find the fact that important npcs such as store owners and blacksmiths are not essential but as stated, unimportant npcs are after their quest. I also find it silly that towns the size of morthal do not have a blacksmith which would be unrealistict if a town was to survive. So they are weak on subject matter or just never thought about the realism factor for this kind of era.